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16

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0005: Speedos

« on: June 07, 2013, 07:26:35 PM »

I was born in the early 50s and went through puberty in the
60s (I had my first masturbatory orgasm shortly after the
premiere of the original Star Trek TV show ;-> ), and the
degree of my ignorance surrounding the whole subject of
sex must be inconceivable to somebody growing up in the
age of the World Wide Web (except maybe for Mormons ;-> ).
But even in those days, the ignorance, fear, and shame
might possibly have been less intense for a boy with brothers,
or a boy who got along with his father better than I did, or
who was better-integrated into his cohort of male peers
than I was.  Or maybe not.  I guess I'll never know.

I can remember when I was 4 or 5, before I had to go to
school, taking an afternoon nap one day next to my mother
in my parents' bedroom in our suburban house.  I had
been looking at a kids' picture-book earlier that day,
and even then there were certain images that were
exciting to me in a way that I would now call erotically-
charged. (Finding and eliminating all images that might
have an erotic potential for any kid anywhere would probably
require forbidding altogther the practice of illustrating
childrens' books -- which is I guess what orthodox Muslims believe
anyway: that it's sacrilegeous to depict Allah's creatures!)

So I'd been looking at a book of fairy-tales or something, and it
had pictures of people in medieval-style tight breeches,
with lots of leg -- prominent calves -- and hints
of buttock.  And the little five-year-old pervert that
was me got turned on.  And later, in bed at naptime,
pulling the covers over my head, I somehow found myself with
my pants down, flipping my soft penis back and forth with an index
finger while thinking about those pictures and staring
at the calf of my own leg.  I must have known, even then,
that this was something that had to be done under the
covers and out of sight.  And then my mother, wondering what the
hell I was up to, yanked the covers back and saw me _in flagrante_,
and yelled at me "Wait til I tell your father what
you've been doing!"  I was terrified, and waited all day
for my father to come home from work and for the other
shoe to drop, and then nothing happened.  (I'm sure the
conversation took place, and I can imagine my father's
reaction:  "Oh, for crying out loud, he's a **boy**!"
But nobody bothered to defuse the situation **for me**.)

I never connected this incident to the innocent teasing
games that I sometimes played with my parents over the
kitchen table, asking them "Where do babies come from?"
and getting the inevitable answer "You'll find out when
you're older."  And repeating the question more
insistently "But I want to know now!" and getting the
same answer until they got tired of the game and yelled
at me to knock it off and go play.

Some years later -- from the music I remember on the
radio I think I must have been 9 (Chubby Checker was singing
"Let's twist again like we did last summer" ;-> ) --
I spent a few weeks during the summer with my country
cousins, daughters of my father's older brother, one
the same age as me and one a couple of years older.
It was the first time I'd spent a substantial period
of time away from home, and I was proud that
I managed it with a minimum of crying at night from
homesickness.  My cousins did not live in a suburban development
with endless concrete sidewalks and asphalt streets,
but in a place where there were wild raspberries
to gather, and a creek with minnows and watercress.
I was recruited as part of the housework brigade
too, and under my cousins' direction I managed to
clean a toilet all by myself, which I thought was
pretty cool.  But the most memorable experience of
that visit was when my youngest cousin (and we
were both pre-pubescent, remember) was getting
dressed one morning and I caught a glimpse of her
naked groin. And there was nothing there except
a slight vertical fold.  I was flabbergasted!
"What's that?" I asked as she hastily covered herself.
"Can I see?"  And she deigned to give me another
quick glimpse.  This was the cause of a great deal
of hilarity on the part of my cousin -- "You mean
you **don't know** that girls are different from
boys down there?"  And the truth was -- no, it had
never occurred to me.  For all I knew, a penis
is just a thing to pee through, and I had had
no prior reason to think that girls didn't have
one too.  My cousin wasn't cruel about it, but the
startling discovery cast a pall over the rest
of the visit, for me.  We went to a lakeside
beach that afternoon, and I remember that the
whole time I worried, with a kind of sick feeling
in the pit of my stomach, that there would be
unpleasant consequences to my discovery -- that
my cousin would tell my uncle and aunt what I had
asked her to show me, or that my own parents
would find out, or **something** bad.

I don't think I connected this discovery about female
anatomy with another incident I remember, which
may have taken place earlier or later, I don't
know.  There was a boy -- a rough-and-tumble
"red-blooded" boy named Gerry G. who was two grades
ahead of me and who lived across the street.
Sometimes -- presumably in earlier grades -- I would tag
along with him and a group of neighborhood kids on the walk
to school in the morning -- the local elementary
school was on the main road with the churches
and shopping center that ran through the middle
of the suburban development we lived in.
And one day Gerry was being "a man" by telling his pals
an off-color story.  I found this kind of thing
threatening -- not because I was a prude, necessarily,
but because I knew it was stuff that adults wouldn't
like ("transgressive," a pomo theorist would say ;-> )
and I was innately afraid of where that kind of
thing might lead.  so anyway, he was spinning this kids'
pornographic tale of sitting in class and seeing up a teacher's
skirt under her desk and catching a glimpse of
her "pussy".  I had no idea what "pussy" meant,
but I was struck by the way Gerry salivated around
the word, as if he had a mouthful of fresh chewing
gum.

And then there was the time that I, completely inadvertently
and innocently, put my foot through the hornet's nest of
sex in a way that got the neighbors up in arms.
When I was 10 or 11, give or take, I started getting
kids' illustrated science books as gifts (wonderful books, like
the kids' version of the Time/Life coffee-table book
_The World We Live In_, or _The Wonders of Life on Earth_).
Anyway, one of them was called _The Human Body_
(in fact, it was exactly this book:
http://img0.etsystatic.com/000/0/5888370/il_fullxfull.287287604.jpg
Amazing, how you can reconstruct your past from the Web nowadays. ;-> )
So at that stage, while I knew a bit more about "where babies
come from" -- I knew there was a sperm, and an egg, and a
zygote, and a blastula, and a gastrula, and all the stages
of fetal development -- I was nevertheless still completely
ignorant about the role of the vagina, and the penis that gets erect,
and penetration, thrusting, orgasm, and ejaculation.
The "fun stuff".  ;->  I think I had a theory for
a while that "catching a sperm" was
something like catching a cold -- that if people lived
close together a sperm could be transmitted like a virus.
Or maybe you had to kiss somebody.  Or sleep in the same bed.
I didn't think it through very clearly.  I don't think I even
knew the "scientific" word "penis" at that time -- I'll
spare you the ridiculous word my mother used for the
organ. (Hm... did she make it up, or did it come from
some tradition or other? I should try to find out one of
these days.)  I still can't bring myself to tell anyone that odd
word my mother used. (I actually heard it used as a personal
name on a TV show once, so maybe it's a real word with a real
history); but it nevertheless wasn't as bad as the name used by
my other (male) cousins' mother -- "Tinker Bell".  Can you imagine
seeing Peter Pan (or anything with a Disney intro containing the
trademark green-skirted fairy) without turning beet-red after
an entire childhood spent thinking of your penis as your
"Tinker Bell"?  (I can guess the etymology -- "Tinker"
from "tinkle" as in "urinate"; "Bell" possibly because
the glans looks like an inverted bell, cf. "[ding] dong".)
I didn't learn the "manly" street word "cock"
until I was much older -- school kids used the word "dick"
(which oddly enough, still has the most erotic charge for me),
and the myriad other words I learned much later.
"Cock" and "dick" still seem to be the ones heard most
often in porn dialog.

Anyway, so at the time I had acquired this kids' book
about the human body, there was a little girl who used
to come over to my house named Debbie B.  I think
she was a year or two younger than me, and lived a
few houses down from us.  The family had a slightly
foreign air -- I think the father may have been
ex-military, and the mother was French.  They had
a big old black Citroën, with running boards (the car
was non-functional, I think, a never-completed restoration
project) parked in the street in front
of their house.  Little Debbie spoke with a bit of
an accent, but I don't think she actually knew
much French -- she once told me that "bateau" means "boat",
but she didn't know too many other words.  I presume
the family was Catholic.

I had become something of a know-it-all science
nerd by then, and I remember one
conversation that took place in our back yard
where my parents had installed a swing-set and
sliding board.  We were using the sliding board,
and I asked Debbie if she knew why the grass was
green.  And she said "Because God made it that way."
And I said "No, it's because it has chlorophyll
in it."  So in that spirit, one day she had
come over, and we were hanging out in the carport,
and I brought out _The Human Body_ and showed it
to her.  I don't remember particularly dwelling
on the chapter about human reproduction (which in any
case **starts** with the fertilized egg and
leaves out the scurrilous preliminaries -- although,
come to think, there may be **very** oblique
allusion to them in a single sentence along the lines of
"after a man and a woman have embraced") -- but that's
the part that stuck with little Debbie, apparently
(and not so surprisingly, in retrospect).  So
she went home and started asking her parents questions.
And her parents were not at all amused.  Her father
marched up to our door (I was not a witness to
that scene, fortunately) to express his displeasure
and demand that my parents reveal to him everything
that I had been telling his daughter.  So
then (after Mr. B had departed -- I never had to face
Debbie's parents directly) **my** parents (who were none
too enlightened themselves) gave **me** the third degree.
Debbie had apparently used the phrase "kiss and swell
up", and so my parents wanted to know what **I**
knew about this "kiss and swell up" stuff, and what
I had said about it to little Debbie.  Fortunately, it didn't
take me long to realize that all this must have something to
do with the book I had recently shown her, so I
got out the book and showed the relevant chapter
to my parents (which got me off
the hook as far as any serious blame or punishment
from my own parents was concerned, but didn't spare
me the emotional fallout from what was to follow),
and my mother (brave woman, I suppose, but not
quite brave or enlightened enough) took the book
and marched down to the Bs' house, only to have
the door unceremoniously slammed in her face.  And
that was the end of all our interaction with the Bs --
Debbie and I were forbidden to play with or speak to
each other, I was forbidden to go near the Bs' house
(I was even reluctant to walk or ride my bicycle
past their place for years afterward), the Bs would
no longer speak to my parents, and apparently there was
plenty of juicy gossip exchanged with and by the other
neighbors.  I suppose it's something of a credit to my parents
that they didn't take the book away from me (I never
actually thought of that until just now).  But quite a
few years later, during some kind of tiff between me and
my mother, she glared at me and said "**You're** the reason I can't
hold my head up in this neighborhood."  I assumed at the time
that she was dragging up the Debbie B. incident, and
maybe she was, but it's also possible that I had
acquired the air of a queer kid by then. (I never
came out to my parents, but I know they had their
dark suspicions.)

That same book popped up unexpectedly many, many years later.
I was channel surfing one day (on the TV, which I almost never
watch anymore in these days of the Web), and I came
across a rerun of _The Wonder Years_ (which I didn't watch
regularly, but I knew what it was about).  I think
it was in fact an episode in which Kevin is dreading
having "the talk" with his father, and there was a
scene in which Fred Savage as Kevin Arnold is lying on the
living-room sofa with The Book (**my** book!)
propped open on his stomach.  I got quite a kick out
of seeing that book again, on TV no less!

Speaking of the "air of queerness" that must have
caused concern and disappointment for my parents,
particularly by the time I'd reached adolescence, the
first memory I have of crossing some kind of gender-role
boundary is a very early one.  I think I may have been
only 3.  It was Christmas Eve, and I was getting
some Christmas presents early, and one of them was
somewhat odd -- it was a kid-size toy clothes iron,
maybe a third the scale of the real thing, painted red.
My father didn't like the present, and he said
"Santa Claus must have left that at the wrong house.
Little boys don't play with things like that."
And he made a move to snatch it away from me ("Let's give this
back to Santa so he can take it to the right house.")
and of course I didn't like getting
a present only to have it taken away the next minute.
So I started to cry, and wanted to keep the iron.
And my father got mad.  And that really spoiled the
whole Christmas-eve scene (and must have had a significant emotional
impact for the memory to have stuck with me from such an early age).
In recent years, I've formulated a hypothesis as to where
that iron might have come from. Electric steam irons were
more common appliances in those days than they are now,
and of course they're also hazardous for little kids to be
around.  I suspect that my kindly grandmother had had to make
me cry by chasing me away from her ironing board,
for safety's sake, and made up for it by getting me the
little iron of my own for Christmas.  It's not like I had any
particularly strong desire to play with it, though
I kept it for many years.

Another incident must have happened around the time I was
10 or 11, and was entirely innocent (if a little clueless)
on my part, but must have caused my parents a fair amount of
angst.  I was sitting on the living-room couch early
one evening in front of the TV, and my mother and father
were in the kitchen.  Either my father had just come home
and we were just about to have supper, or we had just finished
supper and my parents were having their evening drinks,
leaving me a brief time alone with the TV before they took
over the living room.  And I asked (I have no memory of what may
have prompted my question -- I may have asked out of sheer mischievousness,
but I don't know why it would have occurred to me in the first
place.  Maybe it was something I'd just seen on TV.)
"Hey -- if a man and a woman can get married, why can't a man and a
man or a woman and a woman get married?".  And my parents
were **not** amused.  "They just can't, and that's the end of
**that** subject.  We don't ever want to hear any more about it,
and what the hell's the matter with you anyway, asking a
question like that?"  I realized instantly, just from the
tone of the replies, that I'd gone where no kid ought to go,
and I kept a very low profile for the rest of the evening,
and my parents were distinctly on edge with me.

A couple of years later an attempted father-son bonding (ahem ;-> )
experience went sour.  My father decided to go see the
newly-released movie _Goldfinger_.  My parents seldom went to the
movies, and they weren't usually amenable to movie suggestions
from **me** -- I'd wanted to see the George Pal _The Time
Machine_ a few years earlier, but never got to go (I had to get
the condensed version from a neighbor kid; some kids were skilled
at retelling movies and TV episodes in those days) -- so
it must have been entirely my father's idea.  And I can
(now) guess why -- it had the reputation of hovering right on
the edge of being a "blue" movie (a fact my father would have
heard bruited around at work).  So my mother stayed home,
and my father took me to see James Bond.  I had no reason to refuse the
invitation, and in fact I enjoyed the film a great deal --
as an **action** movie (I was blown away seeing that Lincoln
Continental crushed into a little cube with the gangster
inside it).  The "blue" parts (Honor Blackman introducing
herself by saying "I'm Pussy Galore." and Sean Connery muttering
"I must be dreaming.") went completely over my head.  I didn't
remember those parts, and I had no memory of the burst of
giggling that must have erupted in the theater at the
name "Pussy Galore".  (I still didn't know what "pussy"
meant, apart from an affectionate word for "pet cat".)
So when we got home, we all sat down at the kitchen table,
and my mother and father had drinks.  And my mother asked,
with a bit of a leer, if I'd enjoyed the movie.  And I said
yes, and she said "I've heard it's a bit **racy** for a
kid your age."  And then my father (who must have been
just a bit buzzed by this time) demanded "Is there anything
you didn't understand about the movie?  Huh?  Is there
anything you want me to **explain** to you?  Huh?
Is there?  IS THERE?".  And I couldn't figure out where
the manifest hostility was coming from, and said
"No.  No." and sort of backed away from the table.
And my father bore down on me, and repeated his
question "Is there anything you want me to **explain**
to you?", not letting up until my mother, sensing that
something ugly was happening, raised her voice to my father
and said "Jim!  That's **enough**!  Leave him alone."  And I was
dismissed to skulk away somewhere out of sight.  I
can now guess what was going on.  This was going to
be my father's opportunity to have "the talk".
He was going to tell me all about "pussy", and my
mother was probably in on it too.  But his little fag of
a son was too scared and clueless (too much of a
"pussy" himself ;-> ) to cooperate in the fun.
And so my father got mad.  It was very weird and
disturbing.

17

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0020: Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Scouts But Not Gay Leaders

« on: June 07, 2013, 12:04:14 PM »

There's an amateur Web author named James Savik who wrote
a hair-raising (but never finished) autobiographical story
entitled "Broken"
( http://www.awesomedude.com/jamessavik/Broken/index.htm )
describing his experience in the Boy Scouts in the
deep South in the 80s.

In Chapter 4, he describes his patrol getting lost
during a map exercise:

"It started getting dark a little after five. The kids
started getting nervous. It was obvious that we were lost
but I tried to put the best face on it. We stopped for
a little rest and took stock of our situation. . .

We stopped again and I had to admit that I had no idea where
we were. We stuck to the plan but were tired, muddy and cut
up by thorns. I could tell that Nick was shot. Scotty looked
a little worried but Brian was a trooper. He took it in stride.

It was slow going. I had to take Nick piggyback. He was exhausted.
By 8:00, we had found the road that we were looking for. We
were back in our camp by nine.

Everybody was relieved when we came in. They had been looking
for us. It wasn't hard to figure out what was wrong when
we compared our map to the others. The distances and
bearings on waypoints 6, 7 and 9 were transposed. OOPS.
No wonder we got turned around.

I'd almost forgotten Nick was on my back. He was sound
asleep and latched on like a tick. Totally exhausted by
our misadventure, the four of us went to our tent and crashed.
No radio. No fart jokes. I didn't even try to disengage
Nick's death grip. I lay down on my stomach with Nick
still latched on to my back and was dead to the world.

----------------------

The next morning an angry Mr. Rainer [the Scoutmaster]
awakened us. I figured he was pissed about us getting lost.

Nick was still attached so I gently got out of his grasp.
Mr. Rainer told me to get outside now.

With an angry look on his face he growled, “What do you
think you're doing with Turner?”

I calmly explained, “Last night when we got lost, Nick
gave out and I had to carry him. When we got back, he was
sound asleep and latched on. We were all exhausted and
went to sleep where we fell.”

He looked at me suspiciously then he looked at Scotty and
Nick who were emerging from the tent. He grabbed me by the
hair and pulled me out of earshot from the others,
“I don't like that shit. I don't like it worth a damn.
I'm going to be watching you. If I see anything like
that again, you are out of here. Do you understand?”

I wasn't sure exactly what he was pissed about so I
nervously gave a generic apology. I figured that he was
pissed that I had blown the orientation course and
didn't know why. “I'm sorry sir. It won't happen again.”

He growled, “You just make sure it doesn't or there will
be hell to pay.” He turned abruptly and stormed off.

I had never seen him act that way.

----------------------

After the confusing ass chewing from Rainer, I was shaken up.
I made sure that everything that I did or Scotty, Nick or
Brian did until we got home was high and tight.

I talked to Doug about it later that day. He told me not
to sweat it. He would talk to Rainer and cool things off
with the old man. . .
======

And it (the situation described, not the story) goes downhill
from there.  (Spoiler: the Scoutmaster takes it upon himself
to get the **police** involved.)

18

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0005: Speedos

« on: June 06, 2013, 10:18:33 PM »

> I wonder what the response to "No, that's completely weird.
> Go see a doctor." would be.

If I'd been capable of making comebacks like that in 7th
grade, I'd be ruling the world by now.  ;->

19

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0013: Response to Reclaiming Natural Manhood

« on: June 06, 2013, 10:05:18 PM »

book p. 98 PDF p. 129
Chapter 3, "Societal Reactions and Elastic Limits"

Dark Crayons and Drab Drawings

Here is another example of the often very serious consequences that
befall a child as a result of being enmeshed in a role from which he/she
cannot extricate himself/herself. The story concerns a little boy
in a fourth grade classroom comprised of about forty pupils. Several
times each week all the children were encouraged to draw pictures with
the crayons that the teacher provided. And after each picture-drawing
session the boy would hand in a drawing that invariably was composed
exclusively of dark, drab colors. All of this little boy's drawings
were consistently limited to blacks, grays, dark greens, and other
very drab shades. And after several months of such drawings the teacher
began to become worried. She finally decided to take a large number
of the boy's drawings to the school psychologist.

A few days later the psychologist called the child into his office
and simply asked him why he drew all these dark, drab pictures.
The child's response was that he really didn't have any choice in
the matter. He didn't want to draw such dreary pictures. But the
teacher always started the crayon box at the front of the room.
And by the time the crayon box got back to him in the final seat
of the rear row, the only crayons left were the blacks, the grays,
the dark greens, the browns, and other less than "happy" colors.

The moral to this story is that society often creates pathology
as a result of the situations in which it places people. Some situations
are especially conducive to pathology whereas others are conducive
to health, happiness and adjustment. In essence, boys with high
inborn introversion and fearfulness are often required to adapt
to situations which simply do not "fit" these native attributes.
And because they are forced to remain in these situations they simply
do not thrive; and indeed they regress as per the "wishbone effect"
discussed earlier. Were society to place these boys in school situations
that comfortably fit their native temperaments, they would no
longer be bullied, hazed, harassed or belittled for inborn attributes
over which they have no control or choice. And they would begin
to thrive.

book p. 234 PDF p. 265
Chapter 10, "Love Shyness and the All-Male Peer Group"

[T]here is mounting evidence that society **creates** neurotics
as a result of into a certain interest and activity mold. I believe
that to the extent that we create options for children -- to the
extent that we afford them a choice of more than just one type of
peer group, to that extent we are likely to begin observing a
sharp dropping off in the incidence of incipient neuroticism. . .

book p. 244 PDF p. 275
Chapter 10, "Love Shyness and the All-Male Peer Group"

We must put a stop to the multitudinous shyness-generating situations
to which our male children are exposed every day throughout the
entirety of their formative years. I believe that this can be
accomplished without imposing any strain upon cramped school budgets,
and without inconveniencing boys who truly prefer to select
"rough and tumble" forms of play. All children should be expected
to take an active part in some sports activities. But all children
must be accorded a choice as to which sports activities they wish
to involve themselves in. The available choices for children of
all age levels must be made sufficiently varied to accommodate people
of inhibited and melancholic temperament. School districts are
already required by law to accommodate the blind, the deaf, and
children of all intelligence levels who are slow in learning how to
read. Similar accommodations must also be made for children who
are exceptional in the extremely important area of native temperament.
American education quite fallaciously assumes that making friends
"comes natural" to all children, and that relaxed, easy-going
sociability is therefore something which need not be taught.
For the naturally reserved, making friends and learning "small talk"
does not "come natural". Just as slow readers are given a set
of learning experiences that is different from that which is
accorded the majority of children, a "different" set of classroom
experiences must similarly be developed for shy and withdrawn,
socially handicapped children.

Towards this end I believe that a recreation and physical education
program that is in harmony with the psychoemotional needs of ALL
children represents one of the most promising means for the
prevention of chronic and intractable love-shyness. Such a program
of recreation and physical education must incorporate three basic
ingredients: (1) children must be permitted a choice of activities;
options other than "rough and tumble" play must be readily available;
(2) coeducational sports and games must always be available for
those children who want it; and (3) inhibited, melancholic,
low anxiety threshold boys must never be required to play among
a group of children containing bullies or rugged, "rough and tumble"
oriented individuals.

This third point is of especial importance. For even if the game
were tiddleywinks, if an inhibited boy were assigned to play alongside
a "rough and tumble" oriented boy, you can rest assured that the
inhibited boy would very soon be bullied, and would soon learn to
withdraw from tiddleywinks! Boys of diametrically opposite native
temperaments must never be made to play together. Lambs must never
be made to play with lion cubs! Just as the mentally retarded are
never educated in the same classroom as the intellectually gifted,
the highly inhibited must never be thrown in with the highly exuberant,
aggressive extrovert. This is true no matter what sport or game
might be involved.

book p. 248 PDF p. 279

Some of my critics have charged that the above twenty-four activities
do not provide the competition that boys allegedly need to a greater
extent than girls. Critics have also insisted that with the exception
of volleyball these are not team sports; and that team sports are
somehow necessary for teaching boys how to cooperate. The usual
contention is that a cooperative spirit is picked up from active
participation in baseball, basketball, and football; and that this
cooperative and competitive spirit somehow transfers to the business
world and to life in general. I would suggest that competitive drive
is essentially a function of native temperament. Boys with an aggressive
temperament are highly likely to gravitate naturally towards baseball,
basketball and football. And they are similarly quite likely to
display this aggressive drive vis-a-vis the business world. Simply put,
it is not competitive sports that causes competitive business drive.
Every Sunday afternoon the bars are loaded with rather noncompetitive
blue-collar men who have a great love of competitive sports. Instead,
active participation in competitive sports AND active competition
in the business world both reflect an inborn temperament that is
fundamentally aggressive and characterized by a high anxiety threshold.

As for cooperation, girls have long grown up without being required
to partake in "rough and tumble" athletics. Yet it seems to me
that females display far more of a cooperative spirit vis-a-vis
each other than males typically do. Quite clearly, women do not enter
adulthood less capable than men of cooperating effectively with
others. The notion that participation in "rough and tumble" sports
is a necessary condition for inspiring a spirit of cooperation and
of friendly competition appears nothing short of ludicrous.

Of course, the available research evidence has documented what is
actually a far more important point. When shy and withdrawn boys
are required to participate in "rough and tumble" activities they
withdraw into their private shells all the more completely. By
encouraging shy and withdrawn boys to participate, away from the
company of bullies and other aggressive individuals, in the twenty-four
activities I have suggested (in lieu of rugged calesthenics and
contact sports), the shy will be accorded the opportunity to
(1) make friends, and (2) to develop the interpersonal skills and
social self-confidence that are crucial to success and happiness
throughout life.

book p. 570 PDF p. 601
Chapter 24 "Some Recommendations Concerning Prevention"

In criminology today there is an increasing and much welcomed trend towards
the assuring and protecting of the victim's rights. Bullies cause emotional
scars and ruin lives by creating "people-phobes" and social isolates.
Moreover, in not being swiftly, consistently, and severely punished for
their mindless cruelty, bullies' tendencies to treat their fellow human
beings as things (without feelings, or with feelings that do not count)
rather than as people, are strongly reinforced and rewarded. . .

I strongly oppose all forms of racial and sexual segregation. But as
an educator I very strongly support segregation of elementary-school-aged
children on the basis of native temperament. Highly aggressive,
bullying-prone male children must not take classes in the same
classroom or play on the same playgrounds as naturally inhibited,
low anxiety threshold male children. Wolves are not kept in the
same pen as lambs, and chihuahuas and miniature poodles are not
housed with dobermans. Most shy children do not need to be educated
exclusively with other shy children. But they certainly must not be
made to regularly interface with those whose native temperaments are
poles apart from their own, and whose very presence represents
noxious stimuli.
======

Here's an astonishing passage
("Some Final Thoughts", p. 662 of the PDF, p. 631 of the book):

Elementary School Children

For the present moment, I strongly recommend that all conspicuously
shy, timid, socially inhibited elementary school boys be singled out
for experimentation with the monoamine oxidase inhibitors and/or
the tricyclic antidepressant drugs. At the very least, these drugs
will operate (most probably in 75 to 85 percent of all cases)
to take away the anxiety and fears. Once the social anxieties and
"rough and tumble" fears are removed, the child is free to learn
interpersonal skills and at least normal levels of social self-confidence.
It should always be remembered that the peer group is one of the two
most powerfully important socializing agents. With a mind-state that
is free from social fears and timidity, interpersonal interaction
in the full range of children's activities becomes permitted.
Once a child is accorded full participation in the mainstream of
childish play, he can be assured (as this book has demonstrated)
full access to the pleasures of dating, courtship and heterosexual
interaction -- once his fellow same-sexed buddies become involved
in such activities.

Among high school and university students the MAO Inhibitors and
tricyclics may also prove helpful as an accompanyment to
practice-dating therapy. But for a smooth sail, high school (and
especially college) age is far too late for such psychopharmacological
medication. At such advanced ages the young person (1) must be
helped to overcome long-established habits of social inertia,
and (2) must be put through often very difficult interpersonal
skills/social self-confidence training -- training to arrive at
a level of performance and affect that his age-mates (competitors)
had arrived at years before. I think that drug treatment should
be used as an accompanyment to therapy for high school and
college males; but such treatment may now represent a real boon
to boys in the age 3 through 12 age bracket.
======

Wow, this guy was ahead of his time, in 1985. Can you imagine?
Antidepressants for 3-year-olds! (And to think -- Iproniazid,
the first MAO inhibitor, went on the market as an antidepressant
in 1958. I started first grade that September. I wonder if **any**
5-year-old, anywhere in the world, got that stuff. Hm. Maybe
if the 5-year-old had tuberculosis.)

Gilmartin spends most of the book recommending public policies
(like segregating elementary-school students by temperament) that
certainly haven't happened anywhere since the book was written
and don't look like happening anytime soon, and **some** policies
(like outlawing football) that will happen when hell freezes over.
Then, at the end, he says "**For the present moment**,
I strongly recommend. . . experimentation with. . . antidepressant drugs. . ."
which does kind of reverse his whole program and put the onus
back on the kid to take a pill to be "fixed". Apart from the fact
that no one, then or now, would sanction giving an antidepressant
to a 3-year-old, I can't help but fantasize about what I would do
if given the choice to wave a magic wand and have the 5-year-old
that I was in 1958 be put on an MAO inhibitor before being
forced to attend public school for the first time. Would I do
it, or not? I might be quite a different person now. Would I be
better off? I find it a fascinating thing to daydream about.

Another interesting thing that Gilmartin points out is that
homosexual orientation is **orthogonal** to what he calls
"love shyness" (social phobia -- which turns into a lifelong
inability to form an emotionally-intimate [and sexually-intimate,
of course, but Gilmartin calls sex merely "frosting on the cake"]
relationship with a life partner -- stemming from a cruel mismatch
between a boy's native temperament and contemporary child-rearing
practices). This is particularly interesting in light of some
"reparative therapists'" views on the etiology of male
homosexuality (e.g., Joseph Nicolosi of NARTH) -- putting aside
the reparative therapists' usual religious agenda. The NARTHians
and other reparative "theoreticians" postulate that male homosexuality
is caused when a boy with a "sensitive" temperament is
**permitted** to "run away" from masculinizing activities
(like sports) and who, as a result, doesn't get enough "male bonding"
(with his father and with male peers) as a child, and so who
goes looking for it as an adolescent and an adult (at which time
it also becomes eroticized). But the embarrassing thing for the
reparatives is that while this pattern may be true of **some**
homosexuals (it's certainly true of me), it fails to account
for them all (homosexual **athletes** are obvious exceptions --
how do you account for Billy Bean or Ed Gallagher?). And, of course,
Gilmartin explicitly focuses on the other segment of men who
don't fit the NARTHian model -- the men who experienced the
etiological conditions they postulate as the "cause" of
homosexuality, but who turned out **heterosexual** (at least
in orientation). Gilmartin, though he took pains to **exclude**
homosexuals from his own studies (just so he could control
the variable) nevertheless acknowledges that there are gay men
who are "love shy" (and who are therefore, at least in that way,
about as far from the popular stereotype of gay men as you
can get).

20

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0013: Response to Reclaiming Natural Manhood

« on: June 06, 2013, 10:04:22 PM »

> Do you remember which chapters are particularly noteworthy?

Well, here are some passages I excerpted a few years ago on another
blog, together with some comments that I made.

--------------------
book p. 40 PDF p. 71
Chapter 2, "Love-Shyness and the Nature Versus Nurture Debate"

It is no accident that people who suffer from chronic,
intractable cases of love-shyness ALL (with no exceptions)
possess native temperaments which place them high up in
the. . . (melancholic quadrant) of the [Eysenck cross of
inborn temperament; see
http://cnx.org/content/m40704/latest/figure3.jpg ].

Hans J. Eysenck has concluded that inborn introversion is a
natural byproduct of high native arousal levels in the cerebral
cortex, and that these high arousal levels are caused by an
overactive ascending reticular formation (lower brain) which
bombards the higher brain and central nervous system when
social or other stimuli (perceived as threatening) are presented.
This inborn hyperarousability of introverts accounts (1) for
their forming conditioned patterns of anxiety and other inappropriate
emotional responses all too easily; and (2) for the much
greater difficulty in extinguishing maladaptive conditioned
responses in introverts as compared to extroverts and ambiverts.
(Ambiverts include the large majority of the population who
are "in between" the extrovert and introvert extremes.) These
facts partially account for the high prevalence of introverts
among the ranks of neurotics and the love-shy. However, as I
shall attempt to demonstrate shortly, even an extreme introvert
need not develop chronic, intractable love-shyness or any
other form of neurosis.

In stark contrast to the foregoing, Eysenck found that highly
extroverted people tend to have underaroused brains and
nervous systems. Simply put, they are stimulus hungry. This is
why they are always craving and seeking excitement of one kind
or another, and why they must constantly have people around them.

Emotionality (high versus low anxiety threshold) is also a
byproduct of inborn differences in human physiology, and particularly
in the autonomic nervous system and lymbic system. Simply put,
various reactions of the body such as heartbeat, rapid breathing,
the cessation of digestion to make blood flow away from the stomach
and to prepare the organism for flight or fight, tend to be
significantly more labile and easily aroused (and less easily
stopped) in highly emotional (low anxiety threshold) people.
Emotional reactions are regulated by the visceral brain, and
herein lies the locus of the inborn personality dimension of
emotionality.

book p. 48 PDF p. 79
Chapter 2, "Love-Shyness and the Nature Versus Nurture Debate"

In his book entitled TEMPERAMENT AND BEHAVIOR DISORDERS IN CHILDREN,
Dr. [Alexander] Thomas talks at considerable length about what
he calls the "slow-to-warm-up child". And he presents an impressive
amount of research evidence showing how this type of seemingly
"difficult" child can eventually become indistinguishable in
adjustment from the other seemingly "easy", naturally sociable
children when (1) copious opportunity is accorded for informal
play amidst an accepting peer group that is engaged in enjoyable,
non-anxiety-provoking activities, and (2) when patient, kindly
and accepting attitudes are held by parents and teachers.

Simply put, when a child is accepted as he is he becomes free
to grow, to mature, to change in a positive direction, and to
become his true self. When a child is accorded caring and respect
for his feelings and emotional needs, he inevitably becomes a
caring and respecting person who gradually comes to "fit in"
remarkably well. But when that same "slow-to-warm-up" child is
forced to conform to parental or teacher expectations and to play
amidst a physically aggressive, highly competitive peer group
which he finds frightening and anxiety-provoking, he tends to
withdraw. Indeed, he tends to regress and to become progressively
less mature by comparison with the other children in his age cohort.

In essence, the more rigid and uncompromising the parental
expectations are, the more time the "slow-to-warm-up" child will
take to adjust, to mature, and to "fit in". Simply put, it is
counterproductive to try to standardize human personality because
the raw materials (including native temperament) differ for each
child within each of the two sexes.

As Thomas has argued, there is a long-standing tradition in
American society of trying to force square pegs into round holes --
of endeavoring to do whatever seems feasible to make the
behavior, feelings and interests of a child fit prevailing norms
and expectations. Thomas' findings show that there is a costly
price to be paid for our callous insistence upon trying to standardize
human personalities. A far more socially beneficial approach,
as Thomas' research data have shown, is to modify the expectations
of parents, peers and teachers to fit the native temperament of
the child. When this tack is followed, the child flourishes,
grows, matures, and is ultimately as normal in his behavior
patterns as the bulk of his peers.

Modifying parental and peer expectations can be effectively
accomplished through (1) education of the parents and teachers
as to the nature and limits posed by native temperament; (2) the
creation of support groups for parents of shy, inhibited,
"slow-to-warm-up" children; and (3) providing the seemingly
"difficult" child with a choice of peer groups and of peer
group activities. In regard to this last point, one child's
medicine is another child's poison. The typical male child
flourishes in the all-boy peer group that is engaged in
"rough and tumble" play. In contrast, the introverted, inhibited,
"slow-to-warm-up" child flourishes best in the small sized,
coeducational peer group that engages in more gently competitive
activities such as volleyball, bowling, hide and seek,
miniature golf, swimming, shuffle board, horseshoes, croquet,
ping pong, etc.

To be sure, militant physical education enthusiasts have quibbled
that these more gentle sports and games do not provide the
exercise that male children need. (This objection is ludicrous
inasmuch as the "gentle" sport of swimming, for example, exercises
more bodily muscles than does football, basketball and baseball.
Moreover, all male children are not alike in their exercise
needs!) As Thomas' research data have shown, the traditional
tack of insisting that all male children take part in the same
"rough and tumble" activity has eventuated in two consequences
that are very deleterious from the standpoint of both the individual
and the wider society: (1) The melancholic child. . . withdraws
from play and consequently does not get any outdoor physical
exercise at all. In short, very few melancholic male children
subordinate themselves to the rigid requirement they they
must play "rough and tumble" games. They simply withdraw;
and as a result they get little or nothing of the physical
exercise which the physical education enthusiasts deem so
extremely important. The point here is that something is
always better than nothing! (2) The melancholic child fails
to develop the interpersonal skills and the social self-confidence
that are so necessary for success, happiness and adjustment
in this or in any other society. Since he is mistreated,
bullied, abused, and/or ignored by the peers society tells him
he must play with, he quickly develops a "people-phobia".
In essence, he learns to associate being around age-mates with
feelings of anxiety, pain, and strong displeasure. More succinctly,
whereas most people learn to associate feelings of pleasure
and happiness with the idea of "friends", the melancholic boy
learns to associate feelings of pain and anxiety with the idea
of "friends". For him peers cause pain, NOT pleasure!

This latter point is of enormous importance. Active involvement
in enjoyable childhood play has long been known to be an indispensable
prerequisite (in both humans and monkeys) to competent, effective
adulthood. Indeed, social and psychoemotional adjustment in adulthood
absolutely requires and necessitates a long-term history of happy
involvement in play throughout the years of childhood. Play is not
the sort of frivolous activity some people think it is. Play represents
an indispensable component of the classroom of life—much more
indispensable, in fact, than the "3 Rs" that are learned in the
indoor classroom. Research has shown that people can pick up the
"3 Rs" and other intellectual/technical skills at any age.
Unfortunately, socioemotional and interpersonal skills that
are not picked up at the normal times during the course of childhood
play cannot normally be picked up for the first time in later life.
More succinctly, it is vastly more difficult for an adult to
pick up interpersonal skills and social self-confidence for the
first time, than it is for him to pick up intellectual/technical
skills or knowledge for the first time.

People can cultivate and expand their intellects at any age.
Unfortunately, the nature of man is such that deficits in the
interpersonal/socioemotional areas cannot easily be rectified in
adulthood or late adolescence. This is why education in these
areas is so important throughout the years of early and middle
childhood. And it is the peer group, NOT parents or teachers,
who provide this indispensable education. And this is why we
shall never successfully prevent chronic love-shyness in males
unless and until we make sure that ALL little boys have ready
access at all times throughout their formative years to a peer
group and to play activities which they can truly enjoy and to
which they can always look forward with positive emotional feelings
of happiness and enthusiasm.

21

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0005: Speedos

« on: June 06, 2013, 06:57:32 PM »

Isn't it interesting, though, that the guy who designed the
classic speedo brief in 1960 -- Australian Peter Travis, now
in his 80s -- is gay (at least he's alleged to be gay in
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=45731.0 ).
Mr. Travis may simply have taken an idea for competition-style
nylon briefs that had already been used by Olympic swimmers
in the mid-50s, and persuaded the Speedo company to sell it commercially,
according to
http://scaq.blogspot.com/2008/01/peter-travis-80-invented-speedo-in-1961.html .

It's not too surprising that "budgie smugglers" and "banana hammocks"
have always appealed to gay men; it's also not too surprising that
they got people arrested for indecent exposure even in Australia
in the earliest days of their existence.  If you Google "speedo ban"
you'll see that it isn't just the U.S. that's squeamish about
these things:
http://www.outtraveler.com/travel-tips/2013/04/24/speedo-ban-united-arab-emirates
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205564/Alton-Towers-bans-Speedos-inappropriate-family-resort.html

It seems that a few years ago, Cape May, New Jersey **repealed**
a 30-year-old ban that had originally been enacted because
of complaints that gay men came to the beach to cruise in skimpy
bathing suits.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2005-04-30-Speedo-ban_x.htm

It also seems that in France, public swimming pools **require** men
to wear speedo-style suits, by law, as a matter of hygiene.
http://ourhouseinquercy.blogspot.com/2011/11/public-swimming-pools-in-france.html

I remember that when I was, oh, 12 or so, I had a red
nylon swimsuit that wasn't quite a speedo, but that still
showed more in front than anything I'd ever worn before.
And I still remember the initial discomfort (combined with a
certain degree of excitement) I felt each time I went to
the local public swimming pool in that thing.  Of course
my self-consciousness wore off once I actually got in the water,
but it always returned the next time I went to the pool.

I also remember the first time I saw real competition-style briefs,
at the same public pool.  There was a swim-team using the pool for
practice, together with their coach; and all the guys -- a bit older than me
I think -- wore black speedo-style briefs, and when the guys
lined up at the edge of the pool ready to dive in they displayed conspicuous bulge.
In fact I remember thinking that one guy had an outright erection.

I was a sheltered kid, and an only child -- I didn't know the
terms "boner" or "hard-on" or even "erection", or what the significance
of the phenomenon was except as a source of mingled shame and
excitement -- until astonishingly late in the game.  I can't
remember how I thought about such physiological events before I had the
words for them.  But I'm not the only guy in my cohort who was ignorant about
the facts of life, even in middle school.  I remember being at
a friend's house after school one day -- we must have been in
7th grade -- he introduced me to the Time/Life Science Library
books, and lent me a novelization of the sci-fi movie
_Forbidden Planet_; that's where we were intellectually --
and the conversation came, who knows how, to a point at which
he asked me "You know how, when you think or talk about that
stuff, your thing down there gets big and sticks out?  Does
that happen to you?".  And I replied "Yeah." and left it at
that. ;->

But as uncomfortable as I'd been in that red nylon bathing
suit a few years earlier, I can only imagine the trepidation
some of the guys on that swim team must have had to get over
when they were handed those black briefs.  "I have to wear
**this**?"  And silently, because there was no one with whom
to talk about such things, "But what if I, you know. . .?"
And practicing wearing the thing in the bedroom until the
eroticism (you hope) is extinguished enough that you don't
make a spectacle of yourself in front of the other guys,
the coach, and your parents.  These stories are on the
Web these days, and kids can find out that other kids have
the same problems and worries.  That's definitely a good thing.

But yeah, the homoerotic charge of the speedo (and the jockstrap --
mandatory in my day, and was **that** an eyeful when I first
saw one, and saw the other guys wearing them; and the
wrestling singlet) have not gone away, though the increased
visibility of all things gay has made it impossible for
anybody -- even middle-school kids and their parents and
coaches -- to ignore the fact that these are all fetish garments
among gay men.  And that's probably a source of the increased
mockery and prudery surrounding such things, even worse than
the way it was 40 or 50 years ago.

22

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0013: Response to Reclaiming Natural Manhood

« on: June 06, 2013, 05:49:31 PM »

Re the notion of gay men being a "different gender" (manifested by their
shift towards "effeminacy" as well as their sexual attraction toward
other men).

You know, there's another phenomenon that complicates any attempt
to draw categorical boundaries among "masculine" and "feminine"
men and correlate those boundaries with gender-preference
in sexual partners.  Back in the 80's, a book called _The 'Sissy Boy Syndrome'_
( http://www.amazon.com/The-Sissy-Boy-Syndrome-Homosexuality/dp/0300042396/ )
noted that most (but not all) homosexual men did indeed display signs
of gender-atypicality during their childhood, but that at the
same time **most** gender-atypical little boys still grew up into
"normal" heterosexual adult men.

Also back in the 80's, there was a psychologist named Brian G. Gilmartin
(a somewhat controversial figure because he apparently took things
like astrology and Kirlian photography of "auras" seriously, but when
he sticks to psychology he's plausible) who wrote a book (published
in 1985) called _Love-Shyness: Shyness & Love: Causes,
Consequences, and Treatment_.  It's out of print, but it has
apparently been scanned and OCRed (or transcribed) and put on
the Web as a PDF file, downloadable from
http://www.love-shy.com/resources#shynessandlove

Gilmartin's point is that little boys growing up in U.S. culture who happen
to have been born with certain temperamental characteristics --
he refers to them as being in the "melancholic quadrant" of the
"Eysenck Cross of personality"; they'd also presumably likely score high
on the Neurotic factor of a contemporary "Big Five" personality inventory --
are at great risk of life-long emotional damage being wrought
by cultural biases, educational biases, and parental biases
that are completely at odds with such temperaments in male children
(but **not** in female children).

He's talking about the little boys who are easily startled or
frightened, who have a lower pain threshold than is typical,
and who therefore grow up trying to avoid noisy mobs of shouting
boys pushing each other around, and who would rather stay indoors during
recess and read a book.  If such kids are born into cultures
more sympathetic to them (Asian cultures, lets say) they can
flourish, but in West (and in the U.S. in particular) these
kids can suffer lasting psychological damage.  These are kids for whom gym
class, or forced participation in contact sports like football,
is likely to be a nightmare, and who as a result suffer
harassment and bullying both by other kids and by adults (**including**
being disparaged by epithets implying they are homosexual --
"faggot", etc.)

Gilmartin focuses on the (substantial) fraction of these little
boys who grow up to be heterosexually-oriented, but who are
chronically unable to form sexual or romantic relationships
with women (and who are not at all interested in having sexual
or romantic relationships with other men).  Gilmartin does,
these days, acknowledge that **some** fraction of the men he studied would
today probably also be characterized as being somewhere on
the autistic spectrum (Asperger's Syndrome, etc.); he did
not distinguish such a category when he wrote the book.

It's an interesting read.

23

Open Board / Re: Could we speak the language of dolphins?

« on: June 06, 2013, 04:21:33 PM »

She's been "buzzed in the water", huh? ;->

Well, apropos of that and of the overall focus of this
forum (i.e., sexual and emotional relationships considered
"beyond the pale" by conventional society), here's an
unusual book I read recently:

http://www.amazon.com/Wet-Goddess-Malcolm-J-Brenner/dp/0615334601/
http://wetgoddess.net/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/23/malcolm-brenner-dolphin_n_974764.html

The events described in that book took place in the 70s,
during the era of (the controversial, to the point some might
say of crackpottery) John C. Lilly, whom Brenner actually met.
I remember reading a paperback of Lilly's _The Mind of the Dolphin_
back in the late 60s, and reading about Lilly's research
assistant Margaret Howe, who lived (in a specially-designed
flooded house, basically) with a male dolphin for an extended
period of time.  She also (at the dolphin's insistence -- it was the
only way he would remain tractable) formed a quasi-sexual
relationship with her dolphin "friend" (at any rate, she
had to periodically relieve his urges with a hand or foot).
( http://havealittletalk.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/there-really-was-an-amorous-dolphin-peter-more-on-easy-travel-to-other-planets/ )

Brenner mentions Howe in his book -- I was kind of dismayed
to learn that her experience with Lilly and the dolphin ended
rather traumatically for her (as did Brenner's relationship
with "Ruby"), and Ms. Howe has never since been willing to
speak publicly about her experiences.

24

Open Board / Re: Statistics Don't Lie...

« on: June 06, 2013, 04:01:36 PM »

Of course, part of the humor here is that some contemporary
condemnations of (male) masturbation -- particularly from the
religious right -- claim that it is indeed either itself a form of
homosexuality or else that it is a "gateway drug" leading to homosexuality.

(E.g.,
http://www.quotes-watchtower.co.uk/masturbation.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/21/mark-driscoll-masturbation_n_1023743.html )

Many years ago, a straight acquaintance of mine said to me.
"You know, I **love** my cock.  When I'm enjoying my own penis,
I can **almost** get what it is that gay guys like about having
sex with other guys.  (I didn't try to explain to him that being gay
usually involves more than just a fascination with another guy's dick,
that it's more often an attraction to a whole person, including an
element of emotional attachment, or even romantic love.)

25

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0024: Response to 0017 (Plus 0025 and 0026 Combo)

« on: June 05, 2013, 10:41:02 PM »

> It sounds a bit like Death in Venice?

Nothing quite so. . . Continental.

Unlike Aschenbach and Tadzio, the two men do actually
have conversations with each other.  ;->

26

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0024: Response to 0017 (Plus 0025 and 0026 Combo)

« on: June 05, 2013, 12:36:11 PM »

BTW, in your chapter "Grero in the Modern World" you mention
Gore Vidal's _The City and the Pillar_ (which earned Vidal
outright financial punishment in the form of having his books
ignored by the New York Times).

There's another book from the same 1940s era you might find interesting --
_The Fall of Valor_ by Charles Jackson.  The author is better known
for an earlier book (made into a movie) about a binge drinker entitled
_The Lost Weekend_.  Both alcoholism and homosexuality (or bisexuality,
at any rate) turn out to have been semiautobiographical elements
taken from the author's tumultuous and painful life
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Jackson ).

_The Fall of Valor_ is the interior monologue of a married
college professor who has become conscious of a disquieting
fascination (which may or may not, at least at the beginning,
be of a piece with the general adulation and hero-worship
of a grateful public, together with the vague shame of being a passive
bystander during World War II) for the handsome young soldiers in
their uniforms so visible during the war years.  This
fascination intensifies and becomes focused on a particular
young man when the professor and his wife meet the soldier
and his wife during a vacation.  The young soldier seems
to treat the older professor with deference and affection
as a mentor and father-figure, and the professor responds with more
than fatherly regard for the soldier.  It all comes to an unfortunate
end, as you might expect.
( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/580037.The_Fall_of_Valor )

27

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0024: Response to 0017 (Plus 0025 and 0026 Combo)

« on: June 05, 2013, 12:06:14 PM »

You know, I had the opportunity to explore that never-to-be-crossed barrier
in the context of a gay-straight relationship, a few years ago.
I (a self-identified gay man) had become friends at work with a younger,
married straight guy.  I was attracted to him right off the bat,
and we became regular lunch companions, which is unusual (OK, unheard
of) for me.  Nothing much more might have happened, but the following year he
lost a younger brother (to a combination of alcohol and pain pills),
and I went home with him on the day he panicked and left work early because he
hadn't been able to get hold of his brother on the phone for a couple of days
(and yes, later that afternoon the police discovered the worst inside
the brother's apartment).  This came right on the heels of other
recent family tragedies -- my friend had lost both his parents (one
to cancer, the other to a heart attack) within a year of each other,
just a couple of years earlier, and his wife had lost a sister to
an automobile accident the year before.  The wife was out of the country
at the time visiting her own parents, so I stayed with him that night
at his place and spent the next several days accompanying him while he
made funeral arrangements, contacted the rest of the family,
arranged for his wife's return, cleaned out his brother's apartment,
and so on, and in fact I attended the funeral and met a number
of other members of my friend's family.  After that, I became more
than just a work acquaintance -- I was invited to several holiday
get-togethers, and agreed to stay at their place and babysit their
animals for a week or two on a couple of different occasions
while they were on vacation, and I was treated as a family friend.

It was an unusually close relationship for me to have with a straight
guy (and a married straight guy, at that -- no kids at the time, though).
I had made it a point to come out to him when we first started
getting chummy at work, and even suggested to him that doing
the lunch thing every day could conceivably start rumors about him, but
he didn't seem concerned.  He said later, during the family
crisis, that he thought I, being gay, was therefore less
judgmental than a straight friend might be.  My feelings for him
became stronger after his family crisis, but I kept them
to myself for the next year.  During that time, there were occasions
when I didn't quite know what to make of my friend's behavior
toward me.  On the day he discovered his brother's death, he
had spontaneously thrown his arms around me (as well as
his sister), but that was a moment of extreme emotional distress.
But there were other times when he seemed unusually touchy-feely, not
just shaking my hand but grasping my arm when I showed up
at the train station to visit his house.  I sometimes
wondered whether I had come across a "male fag-hag" -- a
straight guy wanting something more intimate (whether physically
or emotionally) than he might get from a typical straight guy friend.
But on the other hand, he didn't seem at all interested in
"gay stuff" -- he wasn't in the least curious about whether
I had any kind of ongoing relationship, or about gay-related
political issues in the news.  There were also times when I wondered
whether I wasn't just a convenience -- somebody who was
guaranteed to agree to take care of the dog while he was
on vacation.

Anyway, about a year after the brother's death, I made a deliberate
decision to push the envelope by initiating a gesture of physical
affection toward him.  Nothing extreme at all -- just a brush
of my hand across the top of his head as a greeting.  It turned
out he didn't like this at all, and he told me so, and that
led to a couple of further strained conversations at the
end of which I pretty much laid all my cards on the table
about how I felt about him.  And that (as I fully expected
it would be) was the end of the friendship.

I was struck, during our final conversation, by how much animus
there was in his reaction to hearing about my feelings.
It wasn't simply that he didn't reciprocate them -- he said
(with emphasis) that he was **viscerally disgusted** just
by the thought that another man could feel that way about him,
or "look at him" that way.  He also mentioned that his wife
had already suggested to him that his relationship with
me might not be a good idea, and they had actually argued
about it, with my erstwhile friend insisting that I was
"too smart" to allow something like that to happen.  I replied
to him (in response to the "viscerally disgusted" remark) that
if a woman were to make a similar confession to me, though
I would have to admit to being unable to reciprocate the
feelings (and would also want to terminate the relationship
for the sake of our mutual mental health), I certainly wouldn't
have such a reaction of vehement disgust.  That, I pointed out,
was what they call "homophobia".  "You can call it
whatever you like," he replied, "it's just how I feel."

And there's no argument to make in response to **that**.

Jack Donovan (a.k.a. "Malebranche") wrote somewhere that he has
a very strict policy about the boundaries of physical affection
with his straight male friends.  He said he treats it exactly
the same way he would treat affectionate gestures from the
wife of a married male friend.  You may **accept** such
gestures (within limits), but you must **never** initiate
them.  To do so would be a violation of trust.  One of the rules
of "androphilia", according to Donovan.

28

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0024: Response to 0017 (Plus 0025 and 0026 Combo)

« on: June 05, 2013, 08:07:28 AM »

In response to 0025 "Masculine Gay Might Not Be Gay At All?"

It's possible, I suppose, but in modern cultures (even in the most
liberal ones) there is such a formidable barrier to be crossed
when a man acknowledges or acts on his attraction to other men
that the motivation to cross that barrier must be high indeed.
As Dan Savage points out, a woman can experiment or even identify
as a lesbian in college and nobody holds that against her
when she later marries a man, but if a man fools around sexually
with another man he will carry the "gay" stigma for the rest of his life
if his "indiscretions" become publicly known.  The price to paid
for crossing the line is high indeed if it entails taking on
the label "homosexual" or "gay".  You can see this in the coming
out stories on YouTube.  The angst is particularly pronounced
for those coming from religious or otherwise conservative backgrounds,
but even guys from liberal households are often terrified at
the prospect of coming out to their parents.  But before a man
who is about to cross that barrier comes out to anybody, he
typically goes through a terrible struggle before he comes to
acknowledge and accept his preference ("preference" is really
too weak a word here) himself, a struggle which takes all too
many guys to the brink of suicide.

Masculine gays, by crossing that barrier, are paying that high
price.  For what, one might ask?  If they're "not really gay"
then why would they subject themselves to all that pain?

29

Der Eigene (Blog + Video) / Re: 0024: Response to 0017 (Plus 0025 and 0026 Combo)

« on: June 04, 2013, 06:03:17 PM »

> Dan Savage talking about his attraction to a butch
> lesbian firefighter... errr if anyone can find this,
> let me know.

It's in this video:
"Dan Savage On Straight Men"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TUg3XHPlzk